North Korea threatens to cancel Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un meeting

A photo released by the North Korean Central News Agency, the state news agency of North Korea, shows a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea held on under the guidance of Kim Jong Un, chairman of the WPK and chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK, in Pyongyang, North Korea, on April 9, 2018.(Photo: KCNA, EPA)

WASHINGTON — North Korea broadened its threat to cancel President Trump's upcoming nuclear summit with Kim Jong Un Wednesday, though the United States downplayed the sudden uncertainty.

At first, North Korea cited joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, always a sore spot, but later the country's first vice foreign minister said in a statement that his government has no interest in a summit with the United States if it’s going to be a “one-sided” affair where it’s pressured to give up its nukes.

North Korea's Central News Agency also announced it had already canceled high-level talks with South Korean counterparts because of the drills it considers rehearsals for an invasion of the North.

Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet June 12 in Singapore as Trump seeks to pressure the North Koreans into giving up their nuclear weapons programs.

U.S. officials, caught by surprise, said they have received no formal notification from the North or South Korean governments, and no formal protest of the military exercises from Kim's government.

"We will continue to go ahead and plan the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un," said State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert.

That planning includes a visit to the White House next week by South Korea President Moon Jae-in for a meeting with Trump.

Nauert added that, in the run-up to the scheduling of the summit, Kim had "said previously that he understands the need and the utility" of the joint military exercises involving the South Koreans.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration "will look at what North Korea has said independently, and continue to coordinate closely with our allies.”

The U.S. Defense Department said the military exercises are annual events, designed to help the U.S.-South Korea alliance defend itself in case of attack. "While we will not discuss specifics, the defensive nature of these combined exercises has been clear for many decades and has not changed," said Army Col. Robert Manning, a Pentagon spokesman.

The South Korean news agency Yonhap reported on the threatened cancellation, the first hitch in talks about the summit since Trump announced March 8 he had accepted Kim's invitation. Yonhap reported that the two-week military exercise between the Americans and South Koreans began Friday.

Commuters watch a TV screen showing file footage of Donald Trump, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea.(Photo: Ahn Young-joon, AP)

North and South Korean officials were scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss ongoing efforts to reduce border tensions, including proposals to re-unite families separated during the Korean War of the early 1950s.

The South and North Koreans are also talking about a formal peace treaty, as they are technically still at war; the original Korean conflict ended with an armistice signed in 1953.

In announcing the cancellation of the meeting with the South Koreans, the North Koreans said that "the United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities," Yonhap reported.

The threat to the Trump summit as well came just days after North Korea announced it would dismantle a nuclear bomb test site sometime May 23 to May 25, part of its its pledge to discontinue nuclear tests.

Last week, the North Koreans released three U.S. prisoners, clearing the way for Trump to announce the date and location of the summit with Kim.

In his statement Wednesday, Kim Kye Gwan criticized recent comments by Trump’s top security adviser John Bolton and other U.S. officials who have been talking about how the North should follow the “Libyan model” of nuclear disarmament and provide a “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement.”

He also criticized other U.S. comments that the North should completely abandon not only its nukes and missiles but also its biological and chemical weapons.

Kim wrote: “We will appropriately respond to the Trump administration if it approaches the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting with a truthful intent to improve relations.”

He added: “But we are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting.”

Some analysts say bringing up Libya, which dismantled its rudimentary nuclear program in the 2000s in exchange for sanctions relief, would risk derailing any progress in negotiations with the North

Kim Jong Un took power weeks after former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s gruesome death at the hands of rebel forces amid a popular uprising in October 2011. The North has frequently used Gadhafi’s death to justify its own nuclear development in the face of perceived U.S. threats.